Diverse & Accessible Heterogeneous Integration (DAHI)
Abstract
The scaling of silicon (Si) transistors to ever smaller dimensions has led to dramatic gains in processor performance over the past fifty years. In parallel, Integrated Circuits (IC) designers for RF circuits have leveraged the different material properties of compound semiconductor (CS) technologies such as indium phosphide (InP), gallium arsenide (GaAs), gallium nitride (GaN) and silicon-germanium (SiGe) to enable devices that operate at frequencies and powers difficult or impossible to achieve in Silicon. Historically, a designer would have to decide between the high density of Si circuits or the high performance of CS materials. Prior DARPA efforts have demonstrated the ability to achieve near-ideal "mix-and-match" capability for DoD circuit designers with limited demonstrations of the heterogeneous integration of silicon and InP technologies that far exceeded what can be accomplished with one technology alone. Specifically, the Compound Semiconductor Materials On Silicon (COSMOS) program enabled transistors of InP to be freely mixed with silicon complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) circuits to obtain the benefits of both technologies (very high speed and very high circuit complexity/density, respectively). The Diverse & Accessible Heterogeneous Integration (DAHI) effort will take this capability to the next level, ultimately offering the seamless co-integration of a variety of semiconductor devices (for example, GaN, InP, GaAs, antimonide based Compound Semiconductors), microelectromechanical (MEMS) sensors and actuators, photonic devices (e.g., lasers, photo-detectors) and thermal management structures. This capability will revolutionize our ability to build true "systems on a chip" (SoCs) and allow dramatic size, weight and volume reductions while enabling higher performance such as power, bandwidth or dynamic range in our electronic systems for electronic warfare, communications and radar. In the Applied Research part of this program, high performance RF/optoelectronic/mixed-signal systems-on-a-chip (SoC) for specific DoD transition applications will be developed as a demonstration of the DAHI technology. To provide maximum benefit to the DoD, these processes will be transferred to a manufacturing flow and made available (with appropriate computer aided design support) to a wide variety of DoD laboratory, Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDC), academic and industrial designers. Manufacturing yield and reliability of the DAHI technologies will be characterized and enhanced. This program has advanced technology development efforts funded in PE 0603739E, Project MT-15.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Accomplishment
- Publication Date
- Oct 01, 2017
- Source ID
- 3ab759139ff9e0f88e6d0b7bb130c7e2
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- Root: ELECTRONICS TECHNOLOGY